Also by Marie Lavoie (in translation)

Mister Roger and Me

To anyone whose heart has been shattered by a “forever” cut short.

Because we just have to laugh.

1

In which I give you my thoughts on marriage

I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT it terribly pretentious to gather all your loved ones in one place in order to say: the two of us, right here, right now, and in spite of the overwhelming statistics, declare that we, temporarily bonded by the illusion of eternity, we are forever. And we’ve asked you to spend time and money to be here today because we – We – we shall elude whatever it is that dissolves other loves. Aged twenty-three, we are certain of this and want to share our conviction with you. We’re neither convinced nor frightened that the vast majority have stumbled before the implausibility of this oath. Our love will endure because our love is special. Our love is not like other people’s. Our marriage will survive. But at nearly every wedding reception, pretty much all of them drunken affairs, guests flood the dance floor to shout, doing their best to drown out Gloria Gaynor, that they have survived the death of their own illusions. I’ve seen them, women of a certain age clutching their imaginary microphones and awarding themselves a sense of invincibility as they belt out the only lyrics everyone remembers from the song: I will survive, hey, hey! Yes, they survived, despite their divorce. Hey, hey.

All in all, there’s really only one problem with marriage, and that’s the exchange of vows. You can’t take them seriously, these promises to love from this day forward, in sickness and in health, until death do you part. For the sake of being honest with future generations who insist on getting married, I propose we rewrite the script to give it more of a twenty-first-century, less fairy-tale feel: “I solemnly swear to love you, blah blah blah, until I stop loving you. Or until I fall for someone else.” Because there’s no denying it: the steamroller of everyday life is bound to quash even the strongest, most ardent passion.

Sure, everyone knows couples who have been together sixty years through thick and thin, perfect metaphors that for centuries have magnified the distress of spouses held captive by their promises. More children are born with a sixth finger or toe than there are couples who have truly spent a lifetime happy with each other. And yet while having an extra digit is deemed an “exceptional anomaly” by science, marriage remains a bedrock of society. When’s the next Sixth Finger Expo?

Me, all I ever wanted was to live with the man of my dreams and have his babies. We would raise them and cherish them, supporting each other as best we could, for as long as we could. I’d have loved my little bastard children so much. And my husband too, even if he’d just stayed my boyfriend. Perhaps I’d have loved even better, free of the girdle of marriage that prevented me from realizing our love had crumbled from within.

I married because my in-laws thought my love was suspiciously simple. Before that, I’d never thought of simplicity as a flaw. They’ll have their fill of complexity now. Divorces are never lacking in that department.

I spent years building myself back up after he announced, “I’m leaving, I’m in love with someone else.” It wasn’t me he killed with those murderous words, but all the notions of myself I’d constructed through his eyes, through the sacred union that completed and defined me. A union to which I’d surrendered myself entirely, seeing as we’d sealed it with holy vows and blessed rings.

When he told me he could no longer keep his promise, I came undone. With just a few words, I lost my bearings. And during that dizzying descent into hell, everything I grabbed for purchase slipped from my fingers.

You might think I resented him for no longer loving me, but you’d be wrong. We can’t control our feelings – everyone knows that. And that’s a good thing. We might be blinded by anger momentarily, but we all come to terms with it at some point. That was something even I could understand, looking beyond the complete devastation I was enduring. And, besides, how could I have forced him to keep on loving me? Wouldn’t he have preferred to still be in love with me? Everyone’s lives would have been easier, starting with his own. He wouldn’t have needed to explain, apologize, justify, and defend himself to so many people and for such a long time before wishing for a return to peace. To be honest, I never envied him once.

That said, I wanted him to pay for all the marks that time, unforgiving, had left on my body. Though I can’t blame him, I’m still bitter that the years did him nothing but favours given today’s tastes in men. Male movie stars are even more attractive in their fifties, but you’d nervously piss your pants if you saw Monica Bellucci play a Bond girl. It was for this dirty injustice that I hated my husband, him and his little bimbo, him and the power he had to start over at an age when my reproductive organs were announcing their retirement. Soon I had so much bile in me that I started to hate myself, body and soul. If Jacques had needed a few more reasons to decamp, I could have provided them by the dozen.

Whatever. Like all those other women, I survived.

2

In which I sink slowly, dragged down by my own weight

“I’M IN LOVE WITH someone else.”

A rush of blood filled my head. My eyes throbbed in their sockets; a few millimetres more and they’d have popped right out. The declaration seemed so absurd that I glanced at the TV, hoping the words came from somewhere else. But the two celebrities trying to stuff a chicken with prosciutto were roaring with laughter. They weren’t talking about falling out of love.

“Diane . . . I didn’t mean to . . . It’s not you, but . . . uuughh . . .”

He launched into a slurry of clichés that tasted like garbage juice. He recited them nervously, obviously anxious to get it over with. I didn’t catch much, just a few painful words: “dull,” “bored,” “passion,” and that he’d been thinking about “us” for a long time. Charlotte had just moved out, so I’d not yet had time to contemplate the use of a personal pronoun that excluded the kids. I should have, I know. But I realized this a second too late.

“Diane, I . . . I’m leaving . . .”

Jacques left that same night, to give me time to calm down and think. Twenty-five years of marriage, snuffed out in a few words. He believed it wouldn’t be good for me if he stayed; that I needed space to digest the news – admittedly a difficult pill to swallow. I watched his dull, insipid words scatter at my feet and I felt sick to my stomach.

He sighed as he rose, exhausted from all the talk. He didn’t want to tell me where he was going, but it was obvious. “Someone Else” was hammering in the first nails of my crucifixion, waiting for him somewhere, waiting for the two of them to celebrate their new life together.

“How old?”

“What?”

“How old is she?”

“Diane, it’s not about age . . .”

“I want to know her fucking age!”

I could see the answer in his hangdog eyes: you don’t want to know, Diane, you don’t want to know. But really, what’s the big deal?

“It’s not what you think . . .”

When the husband of my friend Claudine left her for one of his students, it wasn’t what she was thinking either: “She’s absolutely brilliant. She’s read all of Heidegger!” It wasn’t his fault, poor Philippe, that Heidegger had ejaculated all his philosophizing into the robust brain of one of his students, rendering her completely irresistible. Who’s Heidegger? Who cares. Claudine certainly didn’t give two shits about him – she used a collection of his works as kindling for the fire and to line the cats’ litter boxes. Over time, the image of the chick with the Heideggerian-phenomenology-loving brain morphed into one of little mounds of turds. We do what we can to make things easier.

I sat alone in the dark living room, staring at the television Jacques had turned off. I could see myself reflected in the screen, slightly distorted, my silhouette motionless, paralyzed. My body was trapped in a yoke of pain and shame that prevented all movement. If I sat there any longer I’d eventually end up disappearing, slowly swallowed up by the couch. It would be nice to disappear that way, without a fuss. I’d never get in the way of anyone’s happiness again – me, the boring wife.

The sun rose from the same place it always did. It surprised me. The end of the world seemed to have no effect on the movement of the stars. I would have to carry on, then, when all I wanted to do was roll over and die. So I got up gingerly, carefully bearing weight on legs drained of all life. They’d need to hang in a little longer, too. I’d start by throwing out the couch I’d urinated on in my catalepsy.

I stepped into the shower fully dressed, wishing I could strip away, like my clothes, all that was clinging to me. I watched as the excess dye from my new blazer swirled on the tile floor, mixing with my urine, mascara, saliva, and tears. But the real filth wouldn’t budge.

Outside, I threw all the cushions into a haphazard pile on the freshly mowed lawn. Then, with a sledgehammer I found in the basement, I smashed the couch to pieces, investing all the energy I had left. I accidentally made a giant hole in one of the walls, and it felt good. If I hadn’t been so tired, I’d have reduced the house to dust.

Jacques called the next day to see if I was feeling any better. He asked me to show respect for our loved ones and play the “everything’s tip-top” card as we told the children, our families, our co-workers. And since our twenty-fifth anniversary was coming up and he didn’t think it made sense to cancel everything – “I know, I should have thought about it before . . .” – he insisted we keep things civil and spend the evening together. It would be a quiet family night that everyone “expected and deserved.” I felt like one of those Indian brides who, on their very own wedding night, are held back from the celebrations, ceremoniously set aside to receive good wishes for a happiness that is excluding them already. I never really understood what value my life had for other people, anyway.

“Can you think about it and get back to me?”

“Uh-huh.”

I always hated that, the “get back to me.”

Nevertheless, I did what he said and thought about it.

I opted for a simple, modern solution. I created a Facebook profile (with the help of my son Antoine, coaching me over the telephone). Then I spent hours sending friend requests to the four corners of the province and beyond. I started with my in-laws, his sister, all our distant cousins, colleagues, friends, neighbours, acquaintances, enemies, and all the rest. The moment anyone accepted my request, I selected more people from their own lists of friends to make sure I’d not forgotten anyone. Innumerable people commented on my tardy entry to the world of social media, and oh, how suddenly active I was! I “liked” everything: the things people said, and posted, the comments they made – even the ones telling the world they’d played Tetris that morning or who wanted people to know what kind of tea they were drinking. I commented with an enthusiasm that was as genuine as a fake plant is real.

By evening I had accumulated 329 new friends and was still waiting for a hundred or more responses. I sat down to compose my first-ever Facebook status update. If at all possible, a first should stand out, be unforgettable:

DIANE DELAUNAIS • 8 p.m. •

Oh all-knowing Facebook, can you tell me if I should cancel my 25th anniversary party given that Jacques (my husband) just announced he is leaving me for “Someone Else”? (Sex undetermined, but predictable), Goal: 300 likes by tomorrow. Please share! Now go watch clips of people wiping out in epic fails.

Then I turned off my computer, cell phone, the lights, the television; I locked all the doors (with their chains and other security latches), took a few sleeping pills, and curled up in a ball on the guest bed. I was suffering too much to find pleasure in anything. I wanted the first few days to play out without my involvement. Let people write to each other, call each other, accuse each other, comfort each other, judge him, complain about me, criticize both of us, gasp, be horrified, analyze and gossip about the whole thing without me; I didn’t want to be there for the initial awkwardness, the too-loud whispers of “oh-my-God-she-had-no-idea!”, the dodged glances, the baffled faces, and hands covering mouths to contain surprise or shock – or satisfaction, who knows.

I wasn’t about to parade around in front of whoever, trying to appear like I didn’t want to die. I’d seen so many others, often at work, staggering around like zombies, their arms loaded with files, trying to pretend everything was all right. I took a leave of absence as expensive as a twenty-fifth-anniversary reception and dropped everything for as long as was needed to heal. This is possible when you’re forty-eight and you have a bunch of vacation days saved up and money in the bank. I flung the news out like a bloody carcass to a pack of hungry dogs and didn’t want to resurface until nothing was left but a pile of gristled bones I could pick up without gagging.

I’d hoped the damage I’d caused by hurling such a bomb would dull the pain. But in the end it only made things worse, throwing the tentacles of our relationship back in my face. I’d always thought physical suffering was the worst, but I’d gladly have given birth without an epidural several times over rather than endure this. And I know what I’m talking about.

In the weeks that followed, I refused to see anyone but my children. Clearly, they too were suffering. I let everyone else pound on the door and flood my inbox and voicemail to their heart’s content. I deleted everything without reading or listening. I even deactivated my Facebook profile, without reading the 472 comments that had accumulated. I spent days and nights staring at the ceiling, simply trying to understand what had happened. When, finally, I fell into an exhausted slumber, it was only to wake up in an ever more terrifying nightmare, discovering, every time, that I’d had a limb amputated. The pain never faded, the wound stayed open. I gulped for air. With both feet planted in the dung of my life that seemed to disintegrate like a wafer, I let myself sink.

From the depths of the darkness, I found the strength to push my way back up to the surface. The show must go on, as the song goes. As a teenager, I’d sung the line at the top of my lungs. Now, I was living it.

Gradually, a few at a time, I let the people I loved back into my life. With much solicitude, they showered me with worn-out maxims, like prayers mumbled over centuries. I drank in their awkward kindnesses like over-salted chicken soup after a stomach bug. They didn’t cure me, but they did save me from myself just a little.

There was no anniversary party celebrated with pomp and circumstance at Hotel Something-Or-Other. No heartfelt speeches about the virtues of promises that endure, no renewed vows, no old aunt with wedding cake in her hair or drunk uncles with wandering hands. And definitely no survivors on the dance floor.

With the money I made from selling my wedding rings, I bought an overpriced pair of stunning blue Italian boots – and I say this without shame, because I wanted my feet to eclipse everything else for a moment. I gave the rest to a youth centre, and they used it to buy a foosball and a ping-pong table. It made me happy to know that somewhere kids were whacking balls around on the scraps of my marriage.